I'm an lecturer and museum curator at UCL, specialising in the archaeology of the Middle East. My work can be quite varied, depending on whether I've got my teaching, research or collections hat on — and what I find sitting in my inbox every morning.
Today, my day starts with the long commute from my living room to the study. Like the rest of the UK, I'm in the strange netherworld that is lockdown. I haven't seen the inside of my work office for over three months, and am still mourning all the books and files that I wasn't able to take home with me.
On the plus side, I receive an email to say that it might be possible to do a quick, hit-and-run raid on my office in the near future, to collect any essential teaching or research material I'd left behind. I then spend ten minutes fruitlessly trying to work out which of my several hundred books I really, really, need right now - and how many I could carry home without causing physical injury to myself.
I'm in lock-down, but not locked-out. So my first task of the day is to put up a Facebook post to promote a webinar for the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society ( https://www.facebook.com/IsraelArchaeologyLondon), in my role of society webmeister.
Normally our calendar revolves around public lectures in London, co-organised with the Institute of Archaeology, and washed down with numerous glasses of wine. But, like everyone else, we've had to adjust to the new normal. What could have been a disaster is turning into a new type of outreach; this will be our third online event. Bring your own bottle along.
My next job is to set up some online training for some students who are doing fieldwork placements with the IoA Collections. It isn't possible to send them on a dig right now, so they're working with material from our field archives instead.
Thanks to the generousity of a fabulous Turkish researcher who visited us last year, I have digital copies of field records in our archives, made during Leonard Woolley's excavations at Tell Atchana in the 1930s and 40s.
My students have been editing these images, and will shortly be making transcriptions of the cards, then researching the objects listed — finding out if they've been published, and where they are now. The aim is to tie the archives to the objects — and from there, to the researchers who want to make use of this material.
I've called the project 'Silent Witness', because a) these objects bear silent witness to past cultures, but if we interrogate them, we can bring that past to life, and b) who doesn't like making facile links to popular culture? If you want to see the latter done by a master, I'd recommend you check out the chapter titles of Darville's Prehistoric Britain with its canny references to Prog Rock albums hidden in open view (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780203851944).
To see how the project is getting on, check out our progress reports on IoA's Instagram account (https://www.instagram.com/p/CCdtMrFHSLT/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link).
I was supposed to spend the rest of the day marking object portfolios, but instead, I find myself doing some online training about how to do online teaching. This is what's at the front of every lecturer's mind right now; come September, all our courses have to be converted into something that can be delivered remotely. Its very scary, and a great deal of work – but also an opportunity to revisit what we do, and make everything a lot more interactive and involving.
I only meant to pop into the course, to see what I had to do this week – but made the mistake of getting interested. Several hours later, I've hoovered up this week's lessons, and totally failed to get any marking done.
Actually, looking at a previous year's Day of Archaeology post, I did a similar bit of marking avoidance in 2012 (https://www.dayofarchaeology.com/tours-tatty-bags-bits-in-boxes/). So I guess I'll have to grade myself 'means well, but must try harder'.
I hope everyone has enjoyed their day, whether doing something archaeological, or just reading about it. Shall we do this again next year?
